Sketcher Fest Auxiliary Events

 

7/18/24 Gas Works Park

After the ice cream cruise, locals were eager to show out-of-towners the cool places to sketch in Seattle. Gas Works Park was a popular choice, and rightly so. Its unique structures and great views of Lake Union, the Space Needle and downtown make it my favorite Seattle park to take visitors to. In addition, since we had all just seen the park from the water side, it would be fun for them to see it from the ground.

Since I’ve sketched at the park many times, I thought about what I wanted this story to be about – our visitors – and that’s what I focused on.

My lunch between Gas Works  and the Troll

After Gas Works, Kim and I decided that visitor Joel shouldn’t leave Seattle without seeing and sketching the Fremont Troll (below). Although I have sketched the Troll numerous times, I realized I hadn’t since the attraction had gotten a makeover last year. A new stairway was built to make it easier to climb the Troll, a favorite selfie location.

Fremont Troll with new stairway

Art Walk Edmonds, a Sketcher Fest sponsor, invited USk Seattle to see the exhibits and sketch along the way that evening. After the long day, I started to fade before the throwdown, but not before a relaxed dinner in Edmonds with a few friends at Fire & the Feast, at a lovely sidewalk table.

Dinner at Fire & the Feast, Edmonds

Giving Joel a ride back to his hotel, I thought our sketching day was over – until we saw that Her Majesty was out! I remembered Joel mentioning that he wanted to sketch or at least see Mt. Rainier, so we made a stop at Maple Leaf Park. The golden hour is a time of day that I rarely see Her Majesty, let alone sketch her, so it was a fresh view for me, too. After a long day of nonstop socializing (fun but challenging for this strong introvert), the quiet sketch I made there with Joel was my favorite moment of the whole day.  

Mt. Rainier from Maple Leaf Park

Troll fans

Photo by Kim Roberts

A quiet moment for introverts with Her Majesty

Ice Cream Cruise

 

7/18/24 Lake Washington Ship Canal

Sketcher Fest included several auxiliary events before the main event got underway. One was an “ice cream cruise” through the Lake Washington Ship Canal and on lakes Union and Washington. On a warm (but not hot), sunny morning, the two-and-a-half-hour cruise was probably the most relaxing sketching event I’ve ever participated in. Chatting with (and sketching) friends, taking in the ever-changing water views, cruising on gentle waters – it was the ultimate chill summer activity!

As many times as I've sketched Gas Works Park, I had never sketched it from the water side!

As a treat for all the out-of-town Sketcher Fest instructors, the cruise highlighted Seattle’s main waterways with key landmarks pointed out by Captain Mike. Although I was familiar with most of the landmarks, it was fascinating for me to see everything from the water side, which is something I rarely get to do. Passing under several bridges was especially intriguing.

Eleven years ago when we cruised down the Rhine River, I had a ball making lots of small sketches along the way. The boat moved slowly enough that I could capture quite a bit. I didn’t care if the perspective got wonkier and wonkier – it was such a novel way to sketch! Aboard skipper Mike’s Fremont Avenue, I had the same kind of fun, seeing my city in a fresh way.

James and Roy

Joel

Kim sketching from the lower deck

Capt. Mike

Tina and James (the cruise was so chill that I had plenty
of time for selfies!)

Tina, Brenda, Gail

Jim and Tina

Joel and Tina

Here's the "ice cream" part of the ice cream cruise!

Tina and Laurie

15 Years of Sketching with My Tribe

 

7/17/24 Fishermen's Terminal for our 15th anniversary outing

Dave at Fishermen's Terminal

Although I slept in my own bed each night, I felt like I had been traveling last week – in fact, it felt like I had traveled to an Urban Sketchers Symposium! It was Sketcher Fest, which was all the exhilaration and intensity of a symposium but none of the jetlag – and we had perfect weather, to boot.

Before things got underway in Edmonds, though, we had an unrelated event that was timed perfectly as a lead-up to Sketcher Fest: USk Seattle’s 15^th anniversary celebration! We chose Fishermen’s Terminal, the site of the very first Urban Sketchers outing ever (in Seattle or the world) on July 19, 2009. The late-afternoon outing was followed immediately by a drink & draw across the street at Figurehead Brewery. Both were well attended; in fact, the Terminal turnout of 50+ may have broken previous attendance records. Included were four of the original attendees from 2009: Frank Ching, Dave Morris, Mark Ryan and Gail Wong. (Sadly, Gabi couldn’t join us because he was too busy getting ready for Sketcher Fest!)

Figurehead Brewery drink & draw, where I did more chatting than drawing. Featured in my sketch are Mario Linhares' family (Portugal) and Suhita Shirodkar (Bay Area), all in town for Sketcher Fest.

15th anniversary commemorative sticker
(top, featuring the Fremont troll) 
designed by David Hingtgen

Laurie Wigham, visiting from the Bay Area for Sketcher
Fest, joined us at our celebrations. That's me in the middle of her sketch!

To commemorate our milestone year, we published a retrospective collection of sketches from members arranged chronologically year by year. It’s amazing to see how some parts of Seattle have changed significantly during the last 15 years, while others have not – all recorded by our sketches.

I’m republishing below the introduction I wrote for the book (co-edited by Jane Wingfield and myself and designed by Ellie Doughty). The book is still available for purchase (suggested donation $20).

Building Community One Sketch at a Time

Drawing and painting what we see on location has occupied artists for centuries. The activity we call “urban sketching,” however, began in 2007 when Gabriel Campanario first created a Flickr image-sharing group. Gabi, a journalist and illustrator who had recently transplanted to Seattle, named the group Urban Sketches. He primarily intended the online group as a common place for sketchers around the globe to share their work. He didn’t know then that a major benefit of that initiative would be a way for sketchers to connect in person.

Like many of the best ideas, that connection began spontaneously. Frank Ching, well-known University of Washington professor of architecture and acclaimed author of books on architectural drawing, contacted Gabi. Seeing Gabi’s then-new Seattle Sketcher column in The Seattle Times, Frank had mentioned his own passion for drawing on location. After getting together at Fremont Coffee Company (a meeting that became a Seattle Sketcher blog post), they agreed to sketch together the following month at Fishermen’s Terminal.

Encouraged by some World Wide Sketch Crawl events he had attended, Gabi wanted to invite others to join them. He used the Urban Sketchers Seattle blog he had recently launched to announce a gathering at Fishermen’s Terminal on July 19, 2009. Thirteen sketchers showed up that day. That was USk Seattle’s first outing, and we’ve been meeting regularly ever since.

Initially gathering monthly, we now meet as often as weekly during the best weather months. Even cold, wet winter gatherings can bring out a hardy dozen or more, and beautiful summer days can attract upwards of 30 sketchers. The USk Seattle Facebook group, now 1,700 strong, has been growing steadily. (Meanwhile, the worldwide Urban Sketchers community has grown to tens of thousands.)

“Urban Sketchers came out of my love for drawing and wanting to discover Seattle,” Gabi says, who had moved to the Seattle area with his family in 2006. Although his initial intentions weren’t necessarily focused on the social benefits of urban sketching, “To put together an idea that inspires people all over the world is humbling,” he says. “Making connections through drawing is a privilege.”

Indeed, it is. And all of us who form this community are both honored and proud to show the world what Seattle looks like, one sketch at a time. This publication is a small collection of the many sketches Urban Sketchers Seattle members have made during the past 15 years.

July 17, 2024

Snow Gum Eucalyptus

 

7/15/24 snow gum eucalyptus trees, Maple Leaf neighborhood

When I first tracked down these eucalyptus trees from Taha Ebrahimi’s book, Street Trees of Seattle, I was delighted to realize I already knew these trees. Admiring them for years on one of my walking routes (almost daily during the pandemic), I had always wanted to sketch them, but the light was never quite right in the mornings when I tend to take my walks. Learning that these were special street trees, however, motivated me to look for the right light and finally give them a draw.

The best light turned out to be in the late afternoon when I’m least likely to walk, especially as the days grew hotter, and that time of day is the hottest. One day before our recent heatwave set in, I made a gestural sketch to learn more about their form and try to capture as much as I could of their height (yet I lost most of their crowns; on the right in the page spread below).

Gestural sketch on the right

A couple of weeks later it finally cooled enough to go back and spend more time focusing on their trunks (top of post). From this angle, it’s hard to tell that these are two trees and not one, but when I move so that both trees should be distinctly visible, that parked car is always in the way (of course, that’s a Murphy’s Law of urban sketching). This angle does have the best light, though, so I went with it. They seem to lean so precariously from relatively slender trunks.

6/13/24 My first thumbnail sketch

According to Taha’s book, these are Seattle’s first recorded eucalyptus street trees. They were registered on July 25, 1978, the same day that downtown Seattle’s Rainier Club first admitted a Black member. That type of historical note gives amazing context to the life of these street trees. That was only the year after I graduated from high school – not that long ago, from a historical perspective – yet it’s shocking to think that Blacks were not admitted to a social club in liberal Seattle before then.

Southern Catalpa

 

7/11/24 southern catalpa, Green Lake neighborhood

6/17/24

As I’ve made small sketches of street trees, I’ve been noting ones that I want to go back to for larger portraits. One was a southern catalpa near Green Lake, which author Taha Ebrahimi notes in her book, Street Trees of Seattle, as being the eighth largest-diameter street catalpa in the city.

When I had made the small sketch (at right), its trunk had caught my attention, but I saw that its crown kept it in continual shade, which made drawing it difficult. I wasn’t sure yet how I would approach the portrait when I returned several weeks later, but I walked around the tree several times looking for the right composition. From a distance, I finally saw the full crown – and that’s when I realized that a good half of it had been lopped off to accommodate utility lines. While its trunk was beautiful (and entertaining to the family that had hung a swing and a rope ladder from it), its crown told the full story of its ongoing sacrifice in the service of humans.

Fresh Flours as Reward

7/15/24 Fresh Flours, Greenwood/Phinney Ridge neighborhood

If you’ve ever lived in the same house for several decades (36 years, actually), you know that “stuff” accumulates. It’s a lot of work to un-accumulate all that stuff, but I’m on it.

Fortuitously, just as I was gearing up for the task, the Maple Leaf neighborhood held it’s annual FREE Yard Sale event: Nothing could have a price, and anything was up for grabs if you put it out on the sidewalk in front of your house. Putting your address in an online map of participants helped people find you, especially if you had any specialty items that you wanted to note in your listing. I had never participated in the event before, either as a giver or a taker, but it motivated me to put some stuff in boxes.

I never had so much fun getting rid of our old junk, which, it turns out, other people want! Except for one drawer that I didn’t get to, I cleared out my kitchen of much excess that had ceased to spark joy years ago, if it ever did (how do all those plastic containers reproduce?). I had noted LPs, CDs and analog audio equipment in my listing, and several happy “shoppers” picked through our huge entertainment center filled with cases of music. I enjoyed meeting neighbors, and it felt rewarding to see others delight in things I no longer needed or wanted. (A young woman exclaimed that my Star Wars soundtrack album would thrill her husband, and it gave me great joy knowing that he would receive it.)

By day’s end, very little was left of the dozen or so boxes of stuff I brought out that day. I put what remained into my car and drove it over to Goodwill the next day, where the line of cars wrapped around the block (likely all from Maple Leaf).

Feeling so satisfied that I was actually smug, I went to nearby Fresh Flours to celebrate. It was an exhausting weekend, but it felt so good that I’m now motivated to keep putting things in boxes and moving them out.

A note about Fresh Flours: This bakery’s plentiful sidewalk tables are on busy Phinney Avenue within visual distance of the Woodland Park Zoo. Three times just while I was sketching, a neighbor would pass the café on their walk and see friends seated at the café, pull up a chair, and join the party. It was fun and heartwarming to see a community interact this way. 

Ravenna Street Trees

 

7/13 - 7/14/24 Ravenna neighborhood street trees

Now that I’ve finished sketching the trees in both the Maple Leaf and Green Lake neighborhoods, I’ve moved on to Ravenna’s trees documented in Taha Ebrahimi’s book, Street Trees of Seattle. Ravenna starts on the southern edge of Maple Leaf and goes all the way to the U-District, which is  a long walk for me. I might drive partway to the ones on the southern half, but these two near the eastern edge of Maple Leaf are easy to get to – a western hemlock and an orchard apple.

Sketching in neighborhoods often results in interesting conversations (or overhearing them). As I sketched the hemlock, I eavesdropped on two neighbors discussing a questionable man who had been seen carrying a case of beer, littering cans as he went and sometimes sleeping in people’s yards. One of those neighbors also told me that several flicker families have made their homes in the hemlock over the years. When he had first noticed me sketching, he thought I was an arborist taking census.

7/12/24 Ravenna neighborhood 

The next day, another neighbor who had spotted me sketching the apple tree was concerned that I was from the city and planning to cut the tree down if it was diseased. She loves the apple tree, she said, especially since she had recently lost her own old dogwood to disease.

I enjoy that these street trees give my daily walks a destination and focus.

Material note: I’ve noticed that this particular Uglybooks color is very difficult to photograph accurately, either with my camera or with my scanner. You wouldn’t know it from this image, but the color is much closer to a warm cyan than the cool light cobalt you see here.

7/12/24 Ravenna neighborhood